The Moral Standing of Insects and the Ethics of Extinction

Abstract

The alteration of environments by human activity has led to recent concern about the condition of nonhuman animals in endangered ecosystems. To ethically treat nonhuman animals differently than we treat people requires a rational demonstration of a relevant moral difference between humans and other animals. Potential differences include metaphysical, contractual, and mental considerations. These factors are examined with regard to their philosophical merits and applicability to insects. The criterion of sentience which includes concepts of pain, consciousness, thought, and awareness appears to provide an intuitively satisfying, empirically approachable, philosophical basis for including a being in our moral considerations. Existing evidence indicates that insects qualify as sentient and their lives ought to be included in moral deliberations. Given sentience as the rational basis for moral consideration, groups of individuals (including species) are not accorded special moral status. An ethic is proposed which states that, we ought to refrain from actions which may be reasonably expected to kill or cause nontrivial pain in insects when avoiding these actions has no, or only trivial, costs to our own welfare. This ethic is applied to some specific cases in the teaching, science, and technology of entomology.

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